[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[bennyboy]

It's not like that.  Almost all people are born male or female, under any definition of that term.  The same cannot be said of race.

Don't tell that to people who are Hispanic.

Why?

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Here's another fun thing to chase down the rabbit hole..and it swirls around your impressions of your own manhood above.  The presence of peen you take to be instructive (even though you don't take it's removal to be so).  So..at various points in time, eunochs weren't considered men at all...and in alot of tribal kinship structures, even explicitly binary ones..a person cannot simply be born a man or a woman.  They must become  either through ritual test or procedure.  

These ideas still echo through our culture, which has largely abandoned them as then-envisioned.  Informal rites of passage, feats of manhood, and (largely derogatory)psuedo-distinction replacing their strong normative incarnations.

Interesting.  Links, please.

[The Grand Nudger]

Links...for the fat that societies have envisioned rites of passage that conferred manhood (or womanhood).....?

[bennyboy]

Links...for the fat that societies have envisioned rites of passage that conferred manhood (or womanhood).....?

No, for the assertion that eunuchs were considered neither male nor female, but some kind of 3rd gender. I suspect that eunuchs were considered male, but not considered manly because they didn't have the deep voices, musculature or mannerisms typical of adult human males (aka men).

[The Grand Nudger]

......I already gave you a link that would inform you of that fact......................?

Have we reached that point that infuriates me, where people pretend that the text on the screen doesn't exist? That link very literally begins with a demonstration of that fact by reference to sumerian gender ideology so much as we can ascertain it...by reference to the oldest fucking history we have available.

Clink the fucking links, Benny...... let wonder lead you to knowledge?

[bennyboy]

Really?

Oh. . . you mean the link to wikipedia, the solution for all philosophical problems?

[The Grand Nudger]

Yes, Benny.  That's exactly what I mean.  What did you learn from exploring the link I gave you, that you asked for..and recieved?

[bennyboy]

Yes, Benny.  That's exactly what I mean.  What did you learn from exploring the link I gave you, that you asked for..and recieved?

That PC people are allowed to write wikipedia articles?

I've explained why I say gender is binary-- because all gender-based traits, characteristics and behaviors distill down that way.  Don't believe me?  What traits, characteristics or behaviors define a 3rd-gender person?

I can look around and say that men are usually physically stronger than women, and therefore describe physical strength as a male quality.  Yes, some men are weak, and some women are very strong, but over the species, strength is a defining feature of males rather than females.

I can say the same thing about emotionality-- women tend to be more emotionally sensitive than men, and therefore define certain sensitivities as female.  Yes, some women are insensitive, and some men are very sensitive, but over the species, certain kinds of sensitivity are defining features of females rather than males.

Now, your turn.  Take any existent property of a person, and demonstrate that it is a defining feature of "3rd gender."  I think you'll find only one-- the choice of identity.

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The problem-- and I think maybe we can find some agreement here-- is that trying to conflate all the complexities of a person down into a word is difficult.  I've, for example, said that I do not identify as agnostic even though I don't have any particular active belief in a specific god.  The response has inevitably been an insistence on a biaxial system with belief and knowledge separated.  I find "You're atheist because you lack a specific belief in any god" not to represent my position, or my sentiments, very well.

But as soon as we stop trying to distill it down into a word, all that disappears.  I can say, "Given any specific description of religious gods, I'm confident I will be atheist for each; but I still believe there may be philosophical principles or universal properties that if I came face to face with them, I might very well call them god.  However, since I haven't encountered those principles or properties directly, I prefer to identify as agnostic."  I've said that, and still been told "Then you're an atheist!  Look at this diagram!"

This is our semantic choice: have strongly-typed words with clear-cut meanings, because that's what we want.  Or have weakly-typed words and more verbiose descriptions of nuanced positions, with the understanding that the cost is that categorical words no longer really have the ability to categorize.

[Jehanne]

BB,

No one in The Academy, the LGBTQ movement and/or progressive political movement cares what you think; to them, Us (and, me), you're an ignorant bigot.

Dawn

[bennyboy]

BB,

No one in The Academy, the LGBTQ movement and/or progressive political movement cares what you think; to them, Us (and, me), you're an ignorant bigot.

Dawn

Hmmmm.

It seems to me that you identify as female, and only as that.  Is this not the case?

It seems to me that I told you nobody should live their life feeling trapped in order to maintain the narratives of the people around them. Did you think that was a bigoted statement?

[Jehanne]

BB,

No one in The Academy, the LGBTQ movement and/or progressive political movement cares what you think; to them, Us (and, me), you're an ignorant bigot.

Dawn

Hmmmm.

It seems to me that you identify as female, and only as that.  Is this not the case?

It seems to me that I told you nobody should live their life feeling trapped in order to maintain the narratives of the people around them.  Did you think that was a bigoted statement?

No one who studies LGBTQ issues believes that "gender is binary".